Custom Controls

[WhiteShark]

I'm experimenting with my FPS bindings right now because I've started using a drawing tablet to aim. At first I put the fire button on the pen just as I would a mouse, but this causes a very slight wobble in my aim when pressed, so I've moved it to space bar. This is the gist of my current set up:


For now I've simply swapped the jump button onto the pen, which I still feel is slightly suboptimal but I don't see anywhere else to put it. Moving the home position to the right lets the pinky access more keys, so I've assigned more functions over there. Pinky is currently responsible for aim toggle, crouch toggle, sprint toggle, melee, and weapon swap. Of course, I'm also using the keys above, below, and to the right of my new home position as well, but that's no different than normal, just shifted.

One annoying thing is that certain keybindings that would normally be intuitive (j = journal, etc.) will have to be reassigned. I'll need to develop new 'standard' assignments for myself to maintain consistency in the future.

Anybody else use strange/non-default controls in games?

[Trithne]

We've all heard of WASD. I've used ESDF and WAXD in the past. IJKL I understand as a southpaw config. Fucking Heavy Gear made me move with the numpad.

I have never in my life, before now, seen TFGH put forward as a control scheme for an FPS. I don't really feel like you're gaining anything over WASD or ESDF here. The number keys are harder to reach, your thumb is underneath your hand to use the space bar there, the mentioned issues with jump on tapping the tablet.

I'd say try ESDF - It's a good control scheme once you build the muscle memory.

[WhiteShark]

The number keys are harder to reach

I don't think this is true, exactly. Yeah, 1-3 are harder, but I'm also closer to 7-0, so that part's a wash.

your thumb is underneath your hand to use the space bar there

Not for me. I have small hands. My thumb does have to curve inward a little bit but it also gives me easy access to the 変換 button and to the かな button beyond that, now that I've tested.

the mentioned issues with jump on tapping the tablet

It's not on tap, it's on a side button on my pen. I don't have anything mapped to actually tapping the tablet currently and I don't plan to. I hover the pen just above the surface at all times. The only reason it's slightly suboptimal is the same reason having fire on a pen button was suboptimal: it causes very slight pen movement when I press the button which is not good while I'm trying to aim. I figure it's not so bad with jump because that would cause me to have to realign my aim anyway.

I'd say try ESDF - It's a good control scheme once you build the muscle memory.

ESDF is ok, but I think I'm gaining more buttons overall with TFGH. Not counting number row:

• WASD: pinky gets tab/capslock/shift/control (4 buttons); thumb gets space/alt (if you reach; 2 buttons)
• ESDF: pinky gets Q/A/Z/tab/capslock/shift/control/alt (8 buttons, but quite a reach for control); thumb gets space and loses alt (1 button)
• TFGH: pinky gets W/E/S/D/X/C/無変換 without pushing reach (7 buttons, more if I count ESDF-to-control-equivalent-reach buttons); thumb gets space/変換/かな (3 buttons).

The way I see it this scheme gives me the best access to most of the keyboard. Certainly much more than WASD. I have to use Autohotkey to be able to map the special buttons on my keyboard but thankfully it seems to work; discovering that was a big breakthrough for my setup.

Anyway, though I've never played Armored Core, in the spirit of this thread, I just remembered hearing about how serious AC players hold their controllers:


It's actually quite clever since you can control the sticks while still having full access to the face buttons.

[WhiteShark]

Useful tools for weird keybindings:
Autohotkey: you can use it just to remap keys, but you can also do all sorts of fancy scripting if you want.
SharpKeys: a tool to make remapping keys via the registry easier.

I've used Autohotkey lots, it's very useful. Was using it to remap the 変換 key since games don't usually recognize it. I tried to use AHK for the かな key as well but it didn't work out. Every time I pressed that key it would screw up my ability to click anything and I would ultimately have to restart to fix it. I've solved the problem by using SharpKeys to remap it at the registry level.

[Tweed]

ESDF fo' lyfe. Always a pain in the ass when retarded developers don't let you rebind keys.

[WhiteShark]

I'm looking into foot pedals. Never used them before but I'm on the hunt for more buttons to push without further burdening my left hand. Anyone have any experience with these? This looks promising. In the meantime, I may pull out an old keyboard to test the idea with.

[GhostCow]

I'm looking into foot pedals. Never used them before but I'm on the hunt for more buttons to push without further burdening my left hand. Anyone have any experience with these? This looks promisng. In the meantime, I may pull out an old keyboard to test the idea with.

In the past when I wanted more buttons I just bought a mouse with more. Pedals for anything other than flight sims or racing games seems insane.

[WhiteShark]

In the past when I wanted more buttons I just bought a mouse with more.

I'm experimenting with my FPS bindings right now because I've started using a drawing tablet to aim.

[GhostCow]

In the past when I wanted more buttons I just bought a mouse with more.

I'm experimenting with my FPS bindings right now because I've started using a drawing tablet to aim.

Missed that part, but that just makes you even more insane bro

[Gastrick]

In the past when I wanted more buttons I just bought a mouse with more.

I'm experimenting with my FPS bindings right now because I've started using a drawing tablet to aim.

Missed that part, but that just makes you even more insane bro

Drawing tablets are actually really good for clicking with pinpoint accuracy; the screen-clicking rhythm game Osu pretty much requires it to play well.

[WhiteShark]

Drawing tablets are actually really good for clicking with pinpoint accuracy; the screen-clicking rhythm game Osu pretty much requires it to play well.

This is the reason I own a drawing tablet at all, actually. I'm no artist. After getting it, it occurred to me that if it's more accurate for osu!, then it should also be more accurate in general, and thus began my quest to game with tablet in place of mouse.

[rusty_shackleford]

In the past when I wanted more buttons I just bought a mouse with more.

I'm experimenting with my FPS bindings right now because I've started using a drawing tablet to aim.

wat

[GothGirlSupremacy]

[WhiteShark]

@GothGirlSupremacy you're a fighting game guy, right? Do anything fancy with those controls? A while back I was looking into those Hit Box and other joystickless controllers. They seem cool, though I remember thinking the same thing might be accomplished simply by playing on keyboard.

[Shillitron]

Describe yourself to me in three words

"I'm not sure"

Fucking Gottem.

[Dead]

Pressing foot pedals while using your hands requires more attention than moving your fingers, so using pedals for gaming may be less convenient than it seems. I sometimes use foot pedals when playing musical instruments (which involves similar hand-eye coordination as gaming), and it can distract you from your hands unless you adquately practice using pedals.

[GothGirlSupremacy]

@GothGirlSupremacy you're a fighting game guy, right? Do anything fancy with those controls? A while back I was looking into those Hit Box and other joystickless controllers. They seem cool, though I remember thinking the same thing might be accomplished simply by playing on keyboard.

That's because it can be. A mechanical keyboard is pretty much the same thing as a Hitbox with the only difference being a Hitbox has more of an "arcade layout" so if you played fighting games for a long, long time it's better to adjust to. The buttons are also bigger which can be a factor if you don't have creepy Nosferatu digits like me as it lessens fat-fingering.

However it's also a learning process, especially if you played controller or arcade stick primarily. It takes a ton of time to get used to because you're erasing decades worth of muscle memory and trying to replace it. There is ultimately a benefit to it but for me personally I'm so used to arcade stick and controller it just feels awkward and I don't really find the "gain" to be enough. Plus modern fighting games are becoming much more lax with inputs in general that such demanding precision isn't needed like it used to be. There's also some input tricks you can do since a lot of fighting games generally use similar motions.

Also this is personal vanity, but playing on an arcade stick feels better/more natural to me. Like this is how God intended. The only fighting games I don't play on arcade stick are ones that have hard directional inputs for moves like Mortal Kombat. But there have been people that have succeeded using even shitty stock PS4 controllers for fighting games so in the end it's about what you prefer.

[WhiteShark]

However it's also a learning process, especially if you played controller or arcade stick primarily. It takes a ton of time to get used to because you're erasing decades worth of muscle memory and trying to replace it. There is ultimately a benefit to it but for me personally I'm so used to arcade stick and controller it just feels awkward and I don't really find the "gain" to be enough.

That's fair, but I feel the time investment to get used to a new scheme is exaggerated. I've retrained myself on input schemes multiple times and while it's always highly uncomfortable at first, it doesn't take that long before it becomes a second second nature. For example, I had always played Smash with a GCN controller, but on the Switch I got a pro controller, remapped a few buttons, and was used to it within the week despite playing since Melee with a different setup. Another one is when I switched from the standard English keyboard layout to the one featured in the OP. There are several differences in the layout of the keys aside from the extra buttons. I've been typing my whole life but I've already become so used to the new layout that I can't even remember where some of these changed keys were originally.

Anyway, since I know I can overwrite even decades-old muscle memory without serious issue, I'm always looking for ways to optimize my setup. It's not so important now that I don't really play competitive online games, but I enjoy it anyway, so I persist.

Also this is personal vanity, but playing on an arcade stick feels better/more natural to me. Like this is how God intended.

Yeah, I can get this. It certainly helps when the controls intuitively match the actions they map to in-game. Learning vikeys for roguelikes was nightmarish because the keys don't physically match the directions in which they cause your character to move. That's actually one of the optimizations I didn't fully pursue once I had a numpad again.

[Gastrick]

That's fair, but I feel the time investment to get used to a new scheme is exaggerated. I've retrained myself on input schemes multiple times and while it's always highly uncomfortable at first, it doesn't take that long before it becomes a second second nature. For example, I had always played Smash with a GCN controller, but on the Switch I got a pro controller, remapped a few buttons, and was used to it within the week despite playing since Melee with a different setup. Another one is when I switched from the standard English keyboard layout to the one featured in the OP. There are several differences in the layout of the keys aside from the extra buttons. I've been typing my whole life but I've already become so used to the new layout that I can't even remember where some of these changed keys were originally.

The difference between a fightstick and a regular controller is much greater than the difference between a Gamecube controller and a Switch controller. The fightstick was really difficult to get used to in my experience. That although it's much better for your wrists, moving the character with the joystick and inputting fast input-combinations is annoying. From what I played of Super Street Fighter II, trying to do the Z / shoryuken movement in a split second. Especially facing left. Also the strange way that the youtube videos say to hold the stick, by gently resting your left hand on the joystick and knudging in the different directions.

[WhiteShark]

I didn't find getting used to a proper fightstick hard, but I wasn't a serious pad player before that either. I imagine getting used to a Hit Box would be much harder.

The big difference for me going from GCN to pro controller wasn't the controller itself but the fact that I put jump on a trigger button to make it easier to do quick short hop aerials etc.

[WhiteShark]

I have decided to formally fix my mouse (tablet) sensitivity to 40cm/360°, which means given the dimensions of my tablet I can turn about 270° from end to end. Picking a ratio like this and measuring it yourself is the only way to maintain consistency across all first-person games as engines and in-game sensitivities work differently. I used to play a lot of FPSs online but unfortunately I never made note of my sensitivity settings and I don't have any of those games installed anymore to check, so this probably doesn't match my old sensitivity. Indeed, it actually still feels a bit twitchy to me, but given my tablet dimensions, pushing it much higher seems like it would make it difficult to keep up in a game with a lot of mobility.

Fortunately for me it is very easy to quickly modify my sensitivity: OpenTableDriver allows you to directly set px/mm and it accepts decimals. All I have to do is find a combo that lets me turn exactly 360° from end to end of my tablet and then multiply the px/mm by .75 to get the appropriate sensitivity.

[aweigh]

I'm experimenting with my FPS bindings right now because I've started using a drawing tablet to aim. At first I put the fire button on the pen just as I would a mouse, but this causes a very slight wobble in my aim when pressed, so I've moved it to space bar. This is the gist of my current set up:


For now I've simply swapped the jump button onto the pen, which I still feel is slightly suboptimal but I don't see anywhere else to put it. Moving the home position to the right lets the pinky access more keys, so I've assigned more functions over there. Pinky is currently responsible for aim toggle, crouch toggle, sprint toggle, melee, and weapon swap. Of course, I'm also using the keys above, below, and to the right of my new home position as well, but that's no different than normal, just shifted.

One annoying thing is that certain keybindings that would normally be intuitive (j = journal, etc.) will have to be reassigned. I'll need to develop new 'standard' assignments for myself to maintain consistency in the future.

Anybody else use strange/non-default controls in games?

I moved my Left-Click input to 'E' a long time ago. Considered using SPACEBAR but I just found hitting 'E' more comfortable.

I did it because my left-clicking finger has some nerve damage or something idk, hurts when I Left-Click too much (usually I use my middle finger). Anyway, after doing that I found that I much preferred it because, as WhiteShark pointed out, when u left-click a mouse it moves slightly.

I don't play anything competitively with mouse and keyboard so this is purely just for comfort, though all of the pro Osu! players have LMB input on a keyboard key (or equivalent), so it isn't something new.

Also heard things about making RMB a toggle for aiming down sights, or even putting the RMB function on a keyboard key and using the mouse _only_ for pointing, but never tried that myself. The reason is that holding down the RMB for scoping/ADS'ing negatively affects your ability to aim.

In any case I'm primarily a controller use, I don't like using kb/mouse for game playing. Only really do for CRPGs or some other game that doesn't support controllers. Pressing 'E' for Left-Click input makes playing CRPGs with point-and-click draggable inventories much more comfortable.

[aweigh]

I didn't find getting used to a proper fightstick hard, but I wasn't a serious pad player before that either. I imagine getting used to a Hit Box would be much harder.

The big difference for me going from GCN to pro controller wasn't the controller itself but the fact that I put jump on a trigger button to make it easier to do quick short hop aerials etc.

I played on fightstick for almost 10 years but recently switched back to pad out of simple laziness and convenience. I found that playing hunched over an arcade stick was uncomfortable, and it was always annoying having to get my stick out just for 1 game since I didn't really use it for anything else.

So I just said fuck it and switched back to controller. In less than a month I was already back to the same general baseline of ability that I had on the stick. I found out that being comfortable with your input device is the single most important thing, everything else catches up quickly.

[aweigh]

ESDF fo' lyfe. Always a pain in the ass when retarded developers don't let you rebind keys.

I use ReWASD to make custom binds and control configs for every game I play. Great program.

[aweigh]

I'm looking into foot pedals. Never used them before but I'm on the hunt for more buttons to push without further burdening my left hand. Anyone have any experience with these? This looks promising. In the meantime, I may pull out an old keyboard to test the idea with.

One thing you could do is use ReWASD or equivalent program to make shift-layers; press one key and other keys turn into something else, like hold down shift and your 1-4 becomes 5-8. Can also make use of double-taps and long-presses: have 'R' be your reload like always but if you hold it down it becomes 'K' or whatever.

I used that specific one a lot when playing CRPGs, as I've always found it difficult to hit 5-8 without moving my hand off WASD. Can also make it a double-tap instead, have 1 become 5 when you double-tap it, (or long-press).

In ReWASD you can specify the amount of time required for the long-press to activate, in milliseconds. Same for double-tap (how fast or slow you need to double-tap for the bind to change) though the default for the double-tap has always worked fine for me and i've never needed to change it.

Doubling up binds on a single key can also be useful, like the last time I played Divinity: Original Sin 2 I made the WASD keys that pan the camera also activate the game's 'highlight objects' key when depressed; every time I moved the camera around the object info labels would appear as if the TAB key was being used as well, then when I released WASD it would stop. I found that I mainly only needed to highlight objects when panning the camera so that turned out nicely.

When I played Dragon Age: Origins I made 'W' automatically activate a RMB so when I was walking foward I could move the mouse-camera around without having to physically hold down RMB, then when I stopped moving foward it would return to normal.

[Klerik]

I prefer a frame mounted safety myself. Flick up for safe and push down to engage. I like double action too. SA/DA doesn't bother me. I can't stand slide mounted safeties. They are a liability when charging. I also don't mind heal magazine releases.


Do they have a usb converted for a microsoft sidewinder forcefeedback pro?

[WhiteShark]

Also heard things about making RMB a toggle for aiming down sights, or even putting the RMB function on a keyboard key and using the mouse _only_ for pointing, but never tried that myself. The reason is that holding down the RMB for scoping/ADS'ing negatively affects your ability to aim.

Yup, back in the day I did end up putting the aim button on M4 and setting it to a toggle for this very reason. Taking it off the mouse entirely is probably ideal but I found the interference from M4 to be negligible, especially compared to M2.

One thing you could do is use ReWASD or equivalent program to make shift-layers; press one key and other keys turn into something else, like hold down shift and your 1-4 becomes 5-8. Can also make use of double-taps and long-presses: have 'R' be your reload like always but if you hold it down it becomes 'K' or whatever.

I used that specific one a lot when playing CRPGs, as I've always found it difficult to hit 5-8 without moving my hand off WASD. Can also make it a double-tap instead, have 1 become 5 when you double-tap it, (or long-press).

In ReWASD you can specify the amount of time required for the long-press to activate, in milliseconds. Same for double-tap (how fast or slow you need to double-tap for the bind to change) though the default for the double-tap has always worked fine for me and i've never needed to change it.

Doubling up binds on a single key can also be useful, like the last time I played Divinity: Original Sin 2 I made the WASD keys that pan the camera also activate the game's 'highlight objects' key when depressed; every time I moved the camera around the object info labels would appear as if the TAB key was being used as well, then when I released WASD it would stop. I found that I mainly only needed to highlight objects when panning the camera so that turned out nicely.

When I played Dragon Age: Origins I made 'W' automatically activate a RMB so when I was walking foward I could move the mouse-camera around without having to physically hold down RMB, then when I stopped moving foward it would return to normal.

Wow, these are some very clever ideas. I had thought of doing the equivalent of shift-layers for controller but it hadn't occurred to me to do it on keyboard. I think it would take a bit more effort to become accustomed to it but as I've said before I'm always game for that if it means optimal controls. I don't know if ReWAS has any more or less functionality than AutoHotkey but I'll check it out. Good stuff, thanks.

[Klerik]

This joystick reminds me of an prostate ejaculating ladyboy.